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Comment by Andrex | Hacker News Reader

One of my biggest dream retro projects like this would be taking the cartridge expansion idea and using it to integrate a Wi-Fi radio and full online play connected to a central server. (I originally thought of it for GameBoy, but a Super NES cart would offer a lot more flexibility...)

You can see the bones of such technology in real products:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview

http://nectaris.tg-16.com/GB-KISS-LINK-FAQ-2-hudson-gameboy-...

https://shop.insidegadgets.com/product/wireless-gameboy-cont...

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There is the MegaWiFi (https://github.com/doragasu/mw), an ESP8266-enabled Sega Genesis cart which exists as a open source hardware specification but not a commercial product. You could put one of these together from the spec and then write an online game for the Genesis.

Thank you so much for the link! Will bookmark it for reference for sure, but I'm not as inclined to hack on Gen hardware.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar9WRwCiSr0 Raspberry pi in a NES cart. No reason you couldn’t add netplay to this.

That would be a fantastic place to start, thank you!

...I hope NES programming is similar to GB/Z80, since as far as retro gaming tools go that's all I know right now, haha.

Something like this? https://www.videogamesage.com/topic/762-super-tilt-bro-for-n...

EXACLTY like that! Thank you!

So now I know of NES and Genesis implementations of this idea. That is super encouraging, I thought I was dreaming into the wind alone for years.

I have had similar ideas. Where I ended up was working on Mario Kart 64 mods and figuring out how to enable online multiplayer. Only got some kart speed/accel/size mods working.

Makes me think of XBAND: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBAND

What would you get from this ideal cart that you wouldn’t get from a flash cart? Online play?

Maybe render a game on super hardware on a server, like Stadia, and beam it to your cartridge, format the frame buffer in a way that can be passed to the host console, and output to the CRT.

Play Crysis or Cyberpunk "on" a SNES.

You could do definitely do that and it'd turn a lot of heads for sure, but the example I had in mind was more of a traditional client/server architecture. Like a (new, homebrew) RPG that allows up to 4 players tackling a dungeon together.

https://github.com/alttpo/alttpo#a-link-to-the-past-online--...

Honestly, not as impressive as the "official version." ;)

https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/BS_The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Ancien...

Ha, never got the chance to play that one. I've been working on this project since the start of the pandemic almost. It's got a lot going on inside of it but we just don't have any great marketing material (video) of it at the moment. I feel the key feature is that you can see and interact with other players in real time and conquer dungeons cooperatively. Lots of people seem to run randomized seeds and divide and conquer since items and progress are synchronized.

Here ya go https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/01/how-a-robot-got-super...

The online game's ROM and cartridge hardware including the Wi-Fi radio would have to be made together.

As the Wi-Fi hardware inside the cartridge would be custom, the ROM would have to contain instructions that would not be emulatable by a flash cart (or any other means.)

Edit- Missed "online play?" in your comment. Yes, that's the idea, new homebrew games with actual working online, made for systems released 25-30 years ago.

Thanks for your reply. The SNES was a seminal game system for me and it holds a special place in my heart. I love this idea! Let me know if I can help you make it happen via encouragement, pre-purchasing, beta testing or some combination thereof!

Not sure if I'll ever get it off the ground myself but I'll try tracking you down if I hear of anybody else doing it!

I got linked a Genesis Wi-Fi cartridge elsewhere in this thread: https://github.com/doragasu/mw

Exciting that this idea is already out there! I'm very happy.

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